Skip to content
Michael Stich

Michael Stich

1968 Pinneberg

Short information about the artist

From the greatest German tennis player to the most important German artist! This sentence sounds rather like an affront to the ears of many brooding curators and grumpy art historians! But why is that? Why is pigeonholing still so widespread, especially in Germany? In the minds of many, an athlete is first and foremost and forever an athlete. But by no means a good artist.

More information about the artist

From the greatest German tennis player to the most important German artist! This sentence sounds rather like an affront to the ears of many brooding curators and grumpy art historians! But why is that? Why is pigeonholing still so widespread, especially in Germany? In the minds of many, an athlete is first and foremost and forever an athlete. But by no means a good artist.
Unfortunately, it still does not have a good reputation to live out several existences at once. “The double talent must fear for his double recognition”, the art critic Heinz-Nobert Jocks once wrote. Even today, art by celebrities is often simply ridiculed. Quite wrongly! As curator of the exhibition Beyond Fame at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, I would like to show this. The show brings together artistic works by international and national celebrities and offers the public the opportunity to gain insights behind the façade of public figures, beyond role and celebrity. The exhibition often also holds up a mirror to visitors: In the encounter with the works, one involuntarily realises how strongly one is influenced by the media stereotypes of the celebrities. And how much these influence one’s own reception and how many of one’s own desires and fantasies are directed at famous people.
The stars – athletes like Michael Stich, musicians like Grimes and Peter Doherty or actors like Meret Becker and Lea Dräger – share a long and serious engagement with art. That is why they deserve that we, as viewers, also take a serious look at it. For the results of their works are often unexpected and surprising. And as different as the biographies of the personalities and their artistic drive may be, they all seek in art a new facet, an additional enrichment of their personal lives.
Michael Stich, the former Wimbledon champion and one of the best German tennis players of all time, became interested in painting at a young age, visited numerous exhibitions and became an avid art collector. He has been painting for around 20 years now, processing his personal experiences and thus putting his life on canvas. “Art is my favourite hobby, my passion,” he says. “Starting from looking at it and collecting it to doing it myself. It is a way for me to escape from everyday life and immerse myself in another world.” One can recognise his enthusiasm for US expressionists such as Clyfford Still in his works. At times one discovers a little Sigmar Polke, then again a few colourful influences from Futurism and Constructivism. At first Stich imitated the artists he liked, later he developed his own technique and style.
“Tennis is not only a sport, but also an art”, Erich Kästner once said. Tennis is poetry in motion, a duel with a lot of elegance, aggression and drama. “That’s why I like to compare the tennis court to a canvas,” Stich also says. “The court is a space defined by lines with fixed rules, but in which I can develop completely freely. And a canvas also creates this framework for creativity.” Stich is fully in line with the trend. Because the new generation also writes, paints, sings, photographs and loves to go beyond the usual formats. More universal artists are emerging again. Since people are getting older and older and usually have more than one profession in their lives, they are inevitably forced to reinvent themselves again and again. In 1997, Michael Stich – at the age of just 28 – ended his tennis career. It remains to be hoped that his art career will continue for many, many more years.
And of course Michael Stich is not (yet) the most important German artist. But he is on his way there. And maybe he doesn’t even want to become one. I am delighted by his courage and energy, the way he enters the art world and wins it over. He works on his technique with great verve, paints ever larger and more expressively with great passion in his Hamburg studio, gives free rein to his emotions – and thus creates wonderful works of art. And above all, art gives him so much back: “We postpone our dreams far too often,” he says. “My art is a reflection of my personality and my emotions. It’s passion, not a living.” In conclusion, one can only judge: Game, set and match.
Alain Bieber, Artistic Director NRW-Forum Düsseldorf and Curator of the “Beyond Fame” Exhibition